Mood Indigo...

If Autumn were a tune
it would be the smoky,
slow jazz
of a downtown
dance-floor –

a tardiness
almost tangible
at the close
of a blameless
October day;

unimpassioned
renitent to move on.
No hot-headed
razzamatazz
burns quickly away.
Half-light lingers –

chiaroscuro etchings
on some mauve-washed
artist’s canvas
masquerading
as the sky.

Pheasants scuttle home –
running bronze
on furrowed corduroy...
brown as a weazened
farmhand.

In this autumn dusk
a harvest-moon, sits
atop the copper beeches
like an ochre sun
then rolls down a ridge
toward the west...

with its rival – reluctant
to set, shedding
blood-red ripples
on a mackerel sea.

I stand –
full of awe...
watching Sirius
spritzing the night

and the Plough
and Pleiades
at the crest of a hill
nestling in a shawl
of foxtail pines.